WinInfo Short Takes: Week of May 31, 2010

My wife and I spent this week in Lisbon, Portugal, to celebrate our 20th anniversary. It's unclear where the time went. But it was a great time, complete with good food, good drink, plenty of walking, and even a night of fado music. So, excuse me if this Short Takes is a bit shorter than usual: I'll be catching up on work stuff over the long weekend and should be back on my normal schedule next week.

Ballmer: Market Cap? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Market Cap

With Apple surpassing Microsoft's market cap any time now, you have to think that there's been some serious soul searching in Redmond. (In fact, I'm guessing the recent "retirement" of both Robbie Bach and J Allard are actually tied to this issue.) But the company is putting up a brave public face. "I will make more profits \\[than Apple\\] and certainly there is no technology company on the planet which is as profitable as we are," Ballmer said during a talk in New Delhi, India. "Stock markets will take care of the rest." He has a point, I guess: Microsoft's profits last year were indeed about three times as high as Apple's. However, you have to wonder what happened. While Apple's market cap has grown from $15.6 billion a decade ago to about $220 billion, Microsoft's has shrunk even more dramatically, from $556 billion to $220 billion in the same time period. Not coincidentally, this was also the time period in which the company launched Xbox, Xbox 360, Zune, and various versions of Windows Mobile—all of which lost big money and, more important perhaps, embarrassed the company during a time when Apple was launching hit after hit. So it's no wonder Ballmer bounced the two guys most directly responsible for that mess. But is it enough?

Repeat After Me: The Courier Was Never a Product

I sort of harped on this when Microsoft supposedly cancelled the product that never was: the dual-screen tablet computer called Courier. This week, outgoing Microsoft president Robbie Bach expanded on this fact in an interview with Tech Flash's Todd Bishop. "Courier, first of all, wasn't a device," he said. "The 'device' people saw in the video isn't going to ship, but that doesn't mean we didn't learn a bunch and innovate a bunch in the process. And I'm sure a bunch of that innovation will show up in Microsoft products. But sometimes the power is in the ideas you learn and the things you carry forward, not necessarily just in shipping something." In related news, J Allard (also on the way out) claimed that his departure from Microsoft had nothing to do with the Courier, which was apparently his baby. Hey, so was the Xbox 360.

Microsoft Opens Up Outlook's PST Format

Microsoft this week released two open-source tools for examining the contents of Outlook's PST file, which houses all the email, contacts, calendar entries, and other data associated with the company's proprietary email and personal information management (PIM) application. This is a big deal, because it will allow any developer to write code that can parse PST files, even when Outlook isn't installed on the PC. Perhaps not coincidentally, Google also released its own tool this week, which allows Gmail users to port content from PST files to that service. And Mozilla is apparently looking at using Microsoft's code to help Thunderbird users move from Outlook to that client. Why would Microsoft make this type of thing available—and for free? After all, it's of use only to those who want to move away from Outlook. "The industry as a whole benefits from tools and information that enhance interoperability with our most popular products," a Microsoft statement reads. "Customers are telling us they need greater interoperability, and we believe that welcoming competition and choice will create more opportunities for customers, partners, and developers." Sure. It's also going to obviate the need for Outlook in many businesses, from what I can see.

Intel Working on Tablet-Specific Chipsets

Thanks to the success of Apple's iPad, Intel is now working on tablet-specific CPU and supporting chipset designs that could turn up in Windows 7-based Tablet PCs by the end of the year. "We'll have a dedicated silicon for the tablet space," Intel executive Mooley Eden said recently. "\\[Ultra-low-voltage chips are\\] great for 0.75" or 0.8" notebooks, but might be too hot for a tablet, and you need even a lower-power solution. We decided to come up with a dedicated architecture and dedicated solution to address the tablet segment." It's unclear whether this new design will be Atom-based or something a little beefier, but my understanding is that in-progress Intel-based tablets perform well; the issue is the battery life. (The iPad gets about 10 hours of battery life, and this should be considered the time to beat.) Expect an official Intel announcement at Computex, a trade show happening in Tapei next week.

Facebook, Finally, Is Going to Make Privacy Easier

Bowing to pressure from, well, just about everyone, social networking giant Facebook this week revealed that it will finally do the right thing and turn its labyrinthine privacy controls—which you practically need a GPS to navigate—much simpler. How simple? This simple: All your information can be visible to only friends, friends of friends, or everyone on the Internet. And when you make the change, it's retroactive, and will include whatever information you've already posted to the service. This is huge news because Facebook is used by an astonishing 500 million people, and its current privacy controls include more than150 options, which change pretty regularly and aren't applied forward as new services come online. The changes should appear in everyone's Facebook accounts over the next few weeks, the company says. It can't happen quickly enough.

Listen To, or Watch, the Windows Weekly Podcast

I was away this week, but Leo recorded a new episode of the Windows Weekly podcast with Ed Bott and Mary Jo Foley on Thursday. It should be available on both iTunes and the Zune Marketplace, in both audio and video formats, by the end of the weekend as usual.

Discuss this Article 27

Actually Microsoft runs Microsoft Research, which offers tenured research positions to people with lateral thinking. They spend a few billion per year on purely academic projects that may, or may not ever turn into anything. Some of these are purely wild stuff, like the deep-sky WorldWide Telescope, have created new file systems, OS prototypes (the NT kernel, you know a multi-trillion dollar product thus far), etc.

Microsoft actually runs the largest purely academic research facility in the tech industry, with a budget vastly exceeding that of any other company or academic research institution. Only biotechs ss s category have a larger purely disposable R&D budget. IBM, Intel, and a few other large tech companies still have pure research divisions, but they are smaller than MSFT (heck, IBM used to lead that category).

And yes, hate to break it to you, but Apple does not have any research arm that offers tenure and pushes projects, just because they might learn something.

I love how people support Apple, they do almost no research except for their consumer products, and their CEO is probably in the top 5 people worldwide for annoyingly large egos (and he too participates in almost no significant philanthropy -- you can check because all his wealth is stock and there has been no significant SEC activity for years). Whereas you look at Gates and Allen and have two of the largest philanthropists on earth. Woz is also a true gentleman and a good guy, I think he probably represents the best of what Apple used to be. Somehow the company needs a lot more Woz and a lot less Jobs.

"Apple customers get to pay for the betas that the "Real artists deliver", and after buying a version or two (at premium price) they might eventually end up with something more than just the canvas."

I totally disagree with your assertion that Apple products are "betas". Apple actually gives a lot of thought to their products and even their first generation products are pretty good. Remember the original iPod? The user interface with the click-wheel design was left largely unchanged for several generations, an indication that they pretty much nailed the correct user interface design with their first generation. I think that the model of letting loose a lousy "beta" first edition is much more characteristic of Microsoft's way of doing things, as evidenced by the history of the Zune and Xbox, for example.

After many weeks of using my first-generation iPad, I'm very happy with it. Again, they pretty much nailed the design with the first generation.

"And yes, hate to break it to you, but Apple does not have any research arm that offers tenure and pushes projects, just because they might learn something."

Well, as a researcher, I applaud Microsoft for their academic research facility. That's great. So are the philanthropic efforts of Bill Gates, although I think that I should point out that, scaling for net worth, I actually contribute more to charity that he does.

Comparing Bill Gates, Allen, Woz, and Steve Jobs on charity giving is not only irrelevant, it's nonsensical. Bill Gates, Allen, and Woz are all retired. Steve Jobs is not. Let me also remind you that Bill Gates did not become heavily involved in charity work until he reached the time of semi-retirement or full retirement.

Oh? I'm sorry, what is Steve Jobs rank on Forbes list of the "World's Richest People"?

"Regardless of personal-computer slant, reading research.microsoft.com is quite interesting. They have 451 projects currently running, and some of them are quite remarkable."

Very interesting. I'm a research scientist and I'm familiar with Bell Labs, and PARC. Problem is, I've never come across a paper authored by any Microsoft researcher, which raises the question as to how significant their research is.

"Comparing Bill Gates, Allen, Woz, and Steve Jobs on charity giving is not only irrelevant, it's nonsensical. Bill Gates, Allen, and Woz are all retired. Steve Jobs is not."

The Gates Foundation started in 1994 when he was 38 years old. His wife left MSFT to operate the foundation full-time after the marriage. Their goal is to distribute 100% of the Gates family wealth within 50 years of their death, and most of Warren Buffet's net-worth within 10 years of his passing. There are triggered provisions based on certain events. Quite frankly, they need to be really careful because they can't destabilize Microsoft by dumping their 25% ownership. If they divested too quickly it would be like putting Ireland up for sale.

There is no Jobs Family Foundation. However even little guys like Ted Waitt (founder of Gateway) do nothing but philanthropy these days. The Waitt Foundation is a durable trust I think, whereas Gates' charity is non-durable, unlike a typical endowment.

Regardless of personal-computer slant, reading research.microsoft.com is quite interesting. They have 451 projects currently running, and some of them are quite remarkable. One is creating an abstract programming language to model DNA, there is another in public forest management... Stuff that no one would think ever think is being accomplished by MSFT. I'd say it's 50/50 between what you would expect, and off-the-wall stuff. I commend them for that. They basically run on the equivalent of an internal endowment -- Gates didn't want the research arm to be scuttled (like Bell Labs, PARC, others) due to future short-sighted leadership.

"I thought the NT kernel was more or less derived from VAX"

VMS actually (the OS from the VAX and Alpha CPUs). MS Research hired the VAX guys to come up with something "better", and they basically kicked the NT kernel out of the research labs as a prototype that was then expanded on by the Windows division. A lot of that team is still at MS research.

Microsoft it famous for "3rd times the charm" approach. The recent shakeup in EDD at Microsoft was because it had gone way BEYOND 3 times.

I'm sure the PlaysForSure customers might have a few things to say about the "transition" to the Zune.

I don't disagree that that iPad is a 1.0 device, perhaps as much so ---in retroscpect---as the original Macintosh, which has 128K of RAM and a single 400K floppy, for those who don't remember. It was, nonetheless, a paradigm shift. The iPad has the potential to be the same.

"Some of these are purely wild stuff, like the deep-sky WorldWide Telescope, have created new file systems, OS prototypes (the NT kernel, you know a multi-trillion dollar product thus far), etc."

I thought the NT kernel was more or less derived from VAX, but I don't know the history in much detail...

My favorite on the list is Larry Ellison. His cause, "research on aging." Even his philanthropy is egocentric. And Jobs for instance, run a Google search on how kind/unkind he happens to be, and alas the comments point one direction. There is the well regarded "Pirates of Silicon Valley", and that isn't exactly flattering. I even found a thread on macosx.com (non-official of course) where they were citing examples of his meanness, but in typical brainwashed fashion they defended it by justifying his behavior as exactly what Apple needs. Never mind the fact I know plenty of high level executives and maybe 5% at most are people I can't get along with.

"Problem is, I've never come across a paper authored by any Microsoft researcher, which raises the question as to how significant their research is."

Really? How many Fortune 500 biotechs publish their research? Oh wait, none. The only data you'll see out of them is the minimum mandated by the FDA. That's why biotechs rarely coordinate with universities (since they don't like disclosure, except in drug trials at university med centers, etc). If I'm not mistaken, IBM still has the largest patent portfolio of any company (something like 50,000 patents), and the only peep you'll find out of them are the mandated submissions to secure the patent.

MS research is really an amazing place, but you need to remember, even though it's an academic setting, it is controlled by a massive technology firm. They're not obligated to share with anyone.

"The 'device' people saw in the video isn't going to ship, but that doesn't mean we didn't learn a bunch and innovate a bunch in the process. And I'm sure a bunch of that innovation will show up in Microsoft products. But sometimes the power is in the ideas you learn and the things you carry forward, not necessarily just in shipping something."

Well, LOL! As long as they were "innovating" I guess it doesn't much matter whether they shipped an actual product or not!

"Not coincidentally, this was also the time period in which the company launched Xbox, Xbox 360, Zune, and various versions of Windows Mobileall of which lost big money and, more important (sic) perhaps, embarrassed the company during a time when Apple was launching hit after hit."

You forgot to add 'Vista' which although didn't lose money, lost Microsoft credibility as an OS provider.

"you are a hypocrite if you openly criticize Gates for giving a smaller percentage of his money to charity than yourself, but then your blind love of Apple gives a pass to Jobs for his contribution of zilch"

"Criticize Gates"? Boy, you really have your "selective reading filter" turn on all the way, don"t you? Look at my earlier post. I referred to the "philanthropic efforts of Bill Gates" as being "great". But, yes, I do give a greater percentage of my net worth to charity than Bill Gates gives of his net worth to charity. That's not "criticizing" him, since I already said that I think that he's free to do as he wants with his money. That's simply putting your claims about his level of generousity into perspective.

This is also reflective of the general approach of the two companies in 2010. Apple keeps every idea under wraps until a product is launched, while MS has an open experimentation lab (MS Research) which regularly throw out there small applets and proof of concept code that developers and techs can run with, give feedback on, and see the result of in complete products later. Apple customers get to pay for the betas that the "Real artists deliver", and after buying a version or two (at premium price) they might eventually end up with something more than just the canvas.
But hey, the frame is elegant, I'll give you that.

""Apple customers get to pay for the betas that the "Real artists deliver", and after buying a version or two (at premium price) they might eventually end up with something more than just the canvas."

Oh, I think Microsoft has it's share of that problem"

And, despite the snarkiness, you didn't rebut what I said. Whether "betas" are labeled, 1.0, 1.1, or given fancy names like "Windows ME", they are still transitional products, or sometimes just out and out failures, like, oh let me see now, WinMo, PlaysForSure, etc.

And, in the real world, the iPad "beta" is taking the world by storm. Zune HD, Courier, HP Slate....not so much.

Nonetheless, the iPad is a transitional product. No camera? No GPS? But the "feature list" that is the hallmark of Microsoft sales tactics just isn't working anymore. Not for specifics, but for philosophy, look at the famous "If Microsoft made the iPod Packaging" video on youtube.

The telling point in that video is that it was made at MICROSOFT by some people who were trying to make a point about the failings of their own company. Point made, and very, very funny, but Microsoft can't seem to change.

Maybe Windows Phone will be different, but I doubt it. I don't see Microsoft ever having much success in trying to be Apple, anymore than Apple has much success in trying to be Microsoft.

Windows ME never led to anything but the end of the 9x codebase. Windows XP is the successor to Windows 2000 which in its own right was a massively successful OS, based on the NT kernel.

Sure, you can make a case for releasing upgrades is the same as same as releasing products with an already dated featureset and charging full price as they catch up, I'm not buying it, but obviously many are. Remember the featureset of the original iPhone? No, nor do most.

But I'll hand it to Apple, their "packaging" is unsurpassed. And the design floats anything they release. Which I suppose is why they sell nomatter what they put inside.

"So being worth only 5.5 billion gets you out of any moral obligation to be kind to others?"

Moral obligation? Who are you to be judging the "moral obligations" of others concerning how they use and spend their own money? If I were Bill Gates with a net worth of around 50 billion, I would simply give at least 45 billion of it away immediately. But do I say that Bill Gates has a "moral obligation" to do so? No. It's his money to do with as he pleases.

"How many Fortune 500 biotechs publish their research? .... If I'm not mistaken, IBM still has the largest patent portfolio of any company (something like 50,000 patents), and the only peep you'll find out of them are the mandated submissions to secure the patent."

I don't know about biotech since I'm in the physical sciences. As for IBM, I would say that they are much more than just a "peep" in the published literature. I have come across many papers authored by IBM researchers. However, I haven't come across a "peep" from any Microsoft researchers.

"Realistically, their marketing is conservative and 'good-enough.' Apple has always been pretty stellar. not sure if their relationship has been with the same firm."

Not always, but mostly, they've used Chiat/Day. Chiat/Day did the legendary 1984 commercial. Amelio or Spindler or another one of those disaster non-Jobs CEO dumped Chiat/Day. Jobs brought them back in 1997.

"That's simply putting your claims about his level of generousity into perspective."

But you can't put Gates' contribution "in perspective" without making Jobs' lack of contribution further evidence he is a selfish and not-decent person. And Gates can't liquidate those holdings for charity all at once since it would severely destabilize the company... Buffet is a little better off since his holdings are highly diversified. The single-company impact would be much less. Jobs also couldn't liquidate his Disney holdings without severe harm to the company, unless it were a 5-10 year plan. His Apple shares could actually be dumped fairly quickly because he owns less than 1% of the firm.

I also regard Ted Turner well for donating a third of his fortune to the UN, and people like Philip Anschutz who have done amazing things (Anschutz especially since very few people know the guy - a reclusive billionaire).

The Gates family will still be giving away >50B posthumously. The pledge has already been made, and the organization presently exists for that contingency.

"Moral obligation? Who are you to be judging the 'moral obligations' of others concerning how they use and spend their own money?"

I am in the medical field, and I can assure you that cancer survivors of any stripe (who can afford it) are very generous with their time and money fighting for the cause after attaining a sustained remission. Jobs barely made it out alive. If you've got 5.5 billion dollars, and you do nothing, well, you can spend your money however you like (I don't care really), but you're a selfish loser if you do nothing.

And Weir -- you are a hypocrite if you openly criticize Gates for giving a smaller percentage of his money to charity than yourself, but then your blind love of Apple gives a pass to Jobs for his contribution of zilch (and we know it's nothing because he needs to file papers with the SEC every time he sneezes).

You can say he saved Apple and gainfully employs 35,000 people (which is really no small accomplishment), but by that standard Gates is still a better man since he employs 100,000, was never fired, and MSFT was never in any real jeopardy (plus people consider Gates to be a kind person, but a tough businessman, and you won't find stories about his ego).

I challenge your original point... Most people do believe that we have a moral obligation to help others. 80% of this country ascribes to a certain faith, and the doctrine of that faith requires we give of ourselves to help those less fortunate. *Everyone* knows that meaningful acts of charity make you a better person. It's a core value of this society.

"I have come across many papers authored by IBM researchers."

Most biotechs minimally publish -- IBM is still pretty tight considering thousands of patent apps/year, HP was the most open (but their research arm is a pale shadow of prior years). I suspect IBM's funding is equally sacrosanct to the MS Research group. True transparency only exists at the university level.

"Microsoft ever having much success in trying to be Apple, anymore than Apple has much success in trying to be Microsoft."

For sure. Their corporate philosophies are vastly different, as is their target demo. They build for the business market and resell to consumers where feasible, and Apple, vice versa. As I said earlier in this thread, my only real annoyance with Macs these days are lack of Blu Ray. Cost is still too high, but getting the *right* tool for the job is more important to me than price alone.

What surprises me -- how poor MSFT marketing is. Everything is just really bad. The only thing I can think is that they must have 20+ year loyalty to their firm and just don't want to change for fear of making things even worse. Realistically, their marketing is conservative and 'good-enough.' Apple has always been pretty stellar. not sure if their relationship has been with the same firm.

On top of that, some of their fans see them as competitors, but if you asked Jobs and Ballmer, I don't think they really believe they are in the same markets. For example in the phone arena, I think it's Apple v Google/Nokia. Microsoft is battling RIM. Even something like the HD2 is much better for business than consumer use, but still has some nice perks for people who want them. I have to hand it to HTC -- I think they make some great stuff. Early their engineering was a joke, but they have some really good products now, regardless of platform.

"After all, it's of use only to those who want to move away from Outlook."

Very insightful. Except for pretty much every Exchange administrator on the planet who at some time needs to import, move, export etc, mailboxes, entire mail domains, etc between disconnected mail systems. This often happens using PST which has been used by ExMerge and upwards. Also, this opens for companies like Quest to build mail migration tools to move mail off competing solutions like Zimbra to Exchange. Not to mention out of Google Apps.

"While the Apple-loving press holds its collective breath for what is expected to be an early 2010 announcement of an iPod touch-based tablet computer, the *real deal* is coming from a company with almost of a decade of tablet PC experience. Microsoft is now in the final stages of developing a book-like tablet device (code-named Courier) that completely rethinks the concept of personal computing." (Emphasis mine.)
Paul Thurrott, September 23, 2009

"Repeat After Me: The Courier Was Never a Product"
Paul Thurrott, May 27, 2010

Heck, now where did we all get the idea that the Courier was a real deal - ahem, I mean a real product?

Ah, yes. From journalist extraordinaire Paul Thurrott himself, rewriting his own history since the days of DOS.

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